1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer technology for managing data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer technology for managing data is known. As managed data, data that represents the results of monitoring by the performance monitoring device disclosed by Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2002-99448 or data that represents the results of monitoring various states of computer machines, and so forth, may be considered, for example.
For example, cases may include one where a monitoring device that monitors a state of a certain kind of a computer machine (the CPU usage rate, for example) generates a record that represents the results of this monitoring (‘monitoring result record’ hereinbelow) at regular intervals and manages the monitoring result records thus generated. Further, there can also be cases where a monitoring device generates a summary record that represents a summary of a plurality of monitoring results represented by a plurality of monitoring result records at regular intervals and manages the summary records thus generated together with the plurality of monitoring result records that form the basis of these summary records. In this case, in order to prevent the managed record group from becoming huge, a method according to which the monitoring device manages the monitoring result records that are generated in each first time unit (every minute, for example) in a first period and deletes monitoring result records if the first period is exceeded, and manages summary records that are generated in each second time unit (every hour, for example) that is greater than the first time unit in a second period that is longer than the first period and deletes summary records if the second period is exceeded may be considered.
However, with this method, in cases where the monitoring device detects a summary record representing a unique monitoring result and there is the desire to acquire a plurality of monitoring result records that form the basis of the summary record, for example, sometimes at least one of the plurality of monitoring result records that is to be acquired has already been deleted. When the management period of the monitoring result record is extended, for example, in order to avoid this problem, there is then a large volume of record groups to be managed.
This problem is not limited to a case where a plurality of monitoring result records and summary records are managed and can arise in a case where a data group, which includes a plurality of lower level data and upper level data for each of this plurality of lower level data, is managed.